Category: Financial Markets 2012
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Fasten-Your-Seatbelt, Financial Markets Heading For Heavy Turbulence / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
For every one corporate executive distinguished member of the ATCA 5000, who expects the global economy to improve over the next 12 months, there are at least two senior executives who now expect the global economy to get worse over the coming 12 months. In the aftermath of the Beijing Olympics, four years ago, Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid-September 2008. Are we heading for a similar outcome in the autumn or fall of 2012 post the London Olympics? The last few months of 2012 could really mark a major inflection point in the next phase of a global systemic crisis and the inadequate solutions proffered by those in authority to address the crisis so far. Sadly, we have never even come close to recovering from the last global financial crisis which began in August 2007 and this next crisis might -- should it arrive in late 2012 -- end up being even more painful than the last one. Having said that, there's a clear top 5% of beneficiaries from the last global financial crisis who have profited from quantitative easing and other monetary and financial policies to the detriment of the remaining 95% who have by and large seen their disposable income go down whilst inflation has ratcheted upwards.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2012
George Soros Explains How to Protect Your Wealth / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Why read , watch, listen, and think hard about: Because it is clearly worth while to listen to an address delivered by George Soros this past June, and then think hard about what he says. Reflect on what has happened in the Eurozone in the past two months by way of both events and progress in crisis-solving, in circumstances where Mr. Soros says in his address he believed in June the following three months were very important ones for Eurozone politicians to ‘get ahead of the curve’.
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Sunday, August 26, 2012
How to Make a Fortune on Doomsday / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
The world continues to move towards the December day when another doomsday is expected. While the collective psychosis comes and goes in waves, resonating with apocalyptical information propagating through media channels, the smartest ones are trying to make money on it.
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
U.S. Economy: The Financial Tectonic Plates Are Shifting Once Again / Interest-Rates / Financial Markets 2012
History books call the period after the War of 1812 "The Era of Good Feelings."
America was a young nation that had a sense of purpose. National political strife was at a minimum; optimism was in the air.
Major advances in technology and engineering brought the country turnpikes for easier travel and "The Canal Craze" for more efficient commerce.
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
Investor Opportunity Before The Financial Storm / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
“Many members [of the Federal Reserve rate-setting committee] judged that additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of the economic recovery…” Minutes from the Fed’s recent policy meeting, released 8/22/12
Rarely do the Fundamentals, Technicals, Interventionals and Actual Share Values line up so Favorably as now, but only for a very few select Sectors.
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Friday, August 24, 2012
Even the Eurozone Debt Crisis Gets a Vacation …But Not For Long / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Martin Hutchinson writes: The Eurozone debt crisis has taken a late summer vacation. Since it would be very inconvenient for a disaster to erupt while everyone is on holiday, it doesn't.
That's not to say this rule is infallible. One year, all the decision-makers went on holiday in late July, and came back to find themselves embroiled in World War I.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
What Caterpillar’s Warning Means for Your Investments / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Sasha Cekerevac writes: With the global economy continuing to limp along, we’re all looking for some signs of a rebound. GDP growth has been lackluster in the U.S., negative in Europe, and decreasing in China. After so many years with a weak global economy and trillions of dollars in monetary stimulus failing to provide the spark yet, GDP growth is still not able to accelerate.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Fed Minutes Old News, There Will Be No QE3! / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
The Fed Minutes are from the July 31-August 1 meeting, this was before they latest run-up in asset prices. For example, WTI was $88 dollars a barrel then, now it is $98 and with the new asset prices any QE3 thoughts have now been priced out of the market. In short, the Fed minutes from three weeks ago are outdated. There is no way with eight dollar corn prices and 4 dollar gas that the Fed does any major QE3, just forget that notion.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Post FOMC Market Analysis and Trade Setups / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
FOMC did exactly what it was supposed to do: DO NOTHING and yet give the feeling that it was going to do the biggest asset purchase in its history. Looking at forex markets, it seemed QE was going to begin this week. But for us traders, we couldnt care less if they did QE or not. We leave those to for skillful pens of financial journalists and the analysts out there who feast on every word that comes from FED mouth. We are far too buzy to analyse the language of FED and if he has used “an” or “a” or “the” (sarcasm implied). It splits me up when I read some of the things on the net about how Bernanke is using words like “appropriate time” and “extended” to imply his hearts deepest desire to print. Well they may have a point but that is not trade-able advice and hence ignore it.
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Sunday, August 19, 2012
Ubiquity, Complexity Theory, and Sandpiles, How Change Happens / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
"To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none… The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear …"– Friedrich Nietzsche
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Sunday, August 19, 2012
Financial Markets, Politics, and the New Reality / Politics / Financial Markets 2012
Louis M. Bacon is the head of Moore Capital Management, one of the largest and most influential hedge funds in the world. Last week, he announced that he was returning one quarter of his largest fund, about $2 billion, to his investors. The reason he gave to The New York Times was that he had found it difficult to invest given the impossibility of predicting the European situation. He was quoted as saying, "The political involvement is so extreme – we have not seen this since the postwar era. What they are doing is trying to thwart natural market outcomes. It is amazing how important the decision-making of one person, Angela Merkel, has become to world markets."
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Saturday, August 18, 2012
What The MainStream Media is Hiding from Investors / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
“…Greg Page, chief executive of global grains trading giant Cargill Inc, joined a chorus of critics of biofuels by urging the U.S. government to temporarily curb its quotas to produce corn-based ethanol fuel.
“Page said on CNBC that the U.S. biofuel mandate ‘needs to be addressed’ through existing policy tools. Otherwise, the spike in U.S. corn and soybean prices to record highs will ‘ration’ demand in ways that will hurt food production too much.
“‘If all that is only on livestock or food consumers, it really makes the burden disproportionate. What we see are 3 or 4 percent declines in supply lead to 40 to 50 percent increases in prices, and I think the mandates are what drives that,’ he said.
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Friday, August 17, 2012
The "Fear" Trade, Gold the Only True Safehaven / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Stocks and interest rates are back to late spring – pre latest European fear levels - and the Jefferies/Thomson Reuters CRB index is at a three-month high.
Risk assets are obviously back in favor with investors - possible action by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve (Fed) could offer an explanation why:
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Friday, August 17, 2012
High-Frequency Trading Has the Potential to Kill the Markets / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Shah Gilani writes: It's no wonder the public is scared to invest in stocks. They believe the game is rigged.
It is, and I'm going to tell you who's behind it, what's really happening, when it started, where the sinkholes are, why they're there, how you can play in the short run, and how America can get back to investing in a successful long-term future.
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Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Markets, Inflation and Deflation Over the Next 8 Years / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
I could not go without writing a serious parody of the above original comedy series, so be prepared to enter this guide, which will hopefully offer a fraction of information in “the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom”.
This planet has a problem – and has had this problem repeated throughout history – a problem that made most people living through it unhappy for pretty much all of the time...and this involved periods of inflation and deflation.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Jackson Hole: Make Or Break For The Markets 2012 / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
Investors, speculators, traders and fund managers alike will be glued to their flat screens at the end of August, hanging onto every word that the Chairman Ben Bernanke utters. They will be looking for some positive action on behalf of the Fed in terms monetary stimulus or Quantitative Easing Part Three. Every angle, inference, real or perceived meaning, will be analyzed to the fullest extent with the view to positioning ones portfolio accordingly.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Stock Market Running On Empty! / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. –Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC); Roman Statesman
It becomes harder and harder to find the truth and that certainly holds true with respect to government statistics. The investment world was pleased with the recent jobs report claiming 163,000 posts were created in July. It was a small step, but at least it was in the right direction. Or was it? When I tell you that the numbers are fudged I realize that doesn’t carry a lot of weight, but here’s what the Washington Post had to say about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics processes data:
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Monday, August 13, 2012
Credit Crunch Fifth Anniversary / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis, at least for the UK’s banking system, because it was five years ago that anxious depositors were queuing up to withdraw their money from Northern Rock, leading to its inevitable rescue by the tax-payer.
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Sunday, August 12, 2012
Gold, Silver, Stocks and U.S. Dollar Markets Outlook / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
This week saw consolidation in the markets as they moved within the confines of tight ranges seeking direction. The direction has not yet been confirmed, but there are some insights we may be able to see in the technical picture that will help us understand what the markets want to do. There was a sell signal in the SP500, gold and silver that was triggered on Thursday and it was the first since August 3rd, but by the time friday morning had rolled along the market reconfirmed its bullish bias by closing higher. This behavior confirms that these markets are currently in confirmed up trends and may be setting up for higher prices. Let’s take a look at the market’s behavior.
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Saturday, August 11, 2012
Protecting Democracy And Profits From The Globalist Threat / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2012
“If governments allow themselves to be entirely bound to the decisions of their parliament, without protecting their own freedom to act, a breakup of Europe would be a more probable outcome than deeper integration.”
Italy’s unelected prime minister Mario Monti, 8/6/2012
Shocking but not surprising, is that attitude of Italy’s unelected Prime Minister Mario Monti that “Governments” should not be bound by the decisions of their democratically elected parliaments and should be free to act without regard to the decisions of their citizens.
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